SCENE: In a conference room at the MN DFL headquarters. Chair Ken Martin is sitting along one side of the table with Gretel STROMBERG and Inge “Lucky” CARROLL, the executive director and chief social media meme-buffer at “Minnesotans United for All Conservative Causes”, the state’s primary non-profit political action committee that is no way, no how connected with the DFL, you racist pig. Across the table sits Chad MANBUNFRONDSON, upper midwest outreach director for the Harris/Walz campaign.

MANBUNFRONDSON: So here’s the new ad we’re thinking to get out the vote in Minnesota.

(Clicks remote.  Ad flickers onto the screen)

(MARTIN, CARROLL and STROMBERG look at each other.  The silence is a little awkward).

MARTIN (finally):  It’s pure genius!

(CARROLL and STROMBERG applaud politely in the background)

MANBUNFRONDSON:  We just figured that after seeing her husband’s performance during Covid, where treating the state like a bunch of addled infants for 19 months got him re-elected, that we literally couldn’t go broke betting on the stupidity of MInnesotans.

STROMBERG and CARROLL (simultaneously):  You got that right.

MANBUNFRONDSON:  So, presuming the media vetted the Governor and his wife sufficiently…

(MARTIN, CARROLL and STROMBERG look awkwardly at each other. before bursting out laughing.  MANBUNFRONSON, late to the joke, joins them). 

MANBUNFRONSON:  (Catching is breath) Yeah, I know.  No matter how often I come here, I still can’t get used to this place. 

MARTIN (Summoning a butler with a clap of his hands):  Let’s celebrate!

And SCENE

For a while, after winning complete lopsided electoral sweeps in Minneapolis or Saint Paul, the DFL victory parties would break out into chanting the line in the title.

Ownership has its privileges, as they way – but local DFLers sure seem to be squiggling away from any responsibility for that ownership.

A friend of the blog emails:

It was a town hall meeting to talk about the mess that is the Hamline Midway Neighborhood. The question was what is the city doing with Snelling University. The corner is so trashy, there is litter everywhere. 

Our council member for the area, Mitra Jalali, proposes that the priority is trees and bicycle lanes.

She says it’s either that or a place for people to park their cars.

I mean, I suppose if we eventually get rid of all of the residents and businesses in the area, then no people will be there, thereby eliminating litter.

But, I have to believe, looking towards the thriving areas of St Louis Park’s West End or the shopping area in Eagan that Jalali is probably prioritizing the wrong thing.

All of Melo’s reporting of quotes on X from that meeting are pretty entertaining as the elected people try to dodge any responsibility for where we are today in St Paul. 

 

Thats right, Councilwoman Jalali – it’s the design of the streets.

I’m adding emphasis to this next bit:

Worth looking at- Sandy Pappas saying she actually rides Green Line (but was getting a ride home from husband after the meeting). Leigh Finke saying that millions of dollars were given to DNR for trees and “they spent it in outstate which didn’t need it” so this year, gave “even more money” to Met Council “who has to spend it in the metro area.” 

Yup, our problems are not enough trees …

 

 

 

 

Until the city gets serious about crime, drug-dealing, vagrancy and vandalism – all of which are epidemic at Snelling and University – the new trees would just serve as canvasas for taggers.

Sort of like that freaking Loon at the southwest corner of the intersection. 

More on that later this week

Remember Angie Craig?

Every two years she dusts off the ads with her four-wheeling around the back roads of her district, hanging out with the good ol’ boys in LeSeuer County, trying to appear “moderate”. 

Remember Yusuf Haji? 

Probably not.  He’s running for Dakota County Commission. 

Seems pretty innocent, right?

Turns out Haji’s got friends in low – and left-wing – places:

Turns out, not so much.

Haji is affiliated with “Our Revolution Twin Cities” – a group that wants to defund the police, among a dog’s breakfast of other bad ideas. Here’s an X thread with more on ORTC.

MInd you, this is in the same community that just had two cops and a firefighter killed by someone who would have been in jail but for the DFL’s other dilution of the criminal justice system.

Thing is, this area – the DakCo Commission, the various House districts (Gabriela Kroetsch is a strong GOP challenger in HD55A), and of course Angie Craig is vulnerable enough that this district is considered a plausibly contested race. 

So if you live in the south burbs, don’t be fooled.  Haji is a Moriarty – and Angie Craig is sucking up to the radical fringe that is no longer a fringe in this metro.

 I’ve been meaning to come back to this.   A Harris/Klink op brought it up with a high hanging curveball:

Being corralled into a staged propaganda exercise?

I’ve never been a big Tim Walz fan. Quite the opposite.

But is anyone else getting some…1930s vibes?

Or perhaps more appropriately to Walz’s time in Omahongkong:

I can’t be the only one that finds that photo a little #weird in and of itself, in addition to the historical allusions (especially when you add in Walz’s “One Minnesota” slogan), can I?

Paul Gazelka’s book Lifting the Veil is available right here.

Today’s music list:

Every day is an opportunity for some new kind of social services fraud.

Medicare?  Food? Childcare? 

Old hat!

Now it’s “Autism treatment centers“:

“I and other former employees witnessed some neglect regarding clients’ education needs and self-care. The clients’ goals aren’t being run by the behavioral therapist there,” she told DHS, which administers Minnesota’s version of Medicaid, known here as Medical Assistance, a federal-state health plan for poor and disabled people.

Smart Therapy did not respond to a request for comment. 

The state is investigating 15 autism providers, has already withheld payments to providers and forwarded five to Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison. Although the identities of the centers are unknown, an immigrant autism provider complained that DHS discriminates against minority providers.

The autism investigation comes close on the heels of the Feeding Our Future scandal, which is believed to be the biggest pandemic relief fraud in the nation and has underscored state government’s failure to stop program fraud in recent years. 

 

Autism centers are – this beggars the imagination – not licensed in Minnesota, a state that requires a license to braid hair.  But unlike hair braiding (as far as I know), there’s a ton of government money going into “Autism Treatment” and, well, we know how that ends up in Tim Walz’s Minnesota, don’t we?

The DFL and Media (should almost be one word, shouldn’t it) are howling about allegations of domestic abuse against a GOP legislator, six weeks before the election:

In 2008, Dotseth was arrested and charged with misdemeanor domestic assault and he later pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of disorderly conduct. In a sworn affidavit by his ex-wife when filing for divorce, she detailed years of alleged abuse, according to the newspaper, including that he allegedly kicked and choked her in one incident and in another, pinned her against a wall.

Anyone but me getting deja vu, here?

I’ll help you out – 2006, during Keith Ellison’s first run for Congress, when the Strib put out a hatchet piece against GOP congresisonal candidate Alan Fine, dredging up domestic abuse allegations from his first marriage, but never managed to add a few things to the story: there were no convictions, Fine got custody of their son, and the wife went on to get arrested later on for…domestic abuse.

I’ll wager a shiny new quarter the allegations were brought up by an ex-spouse and her sleazebag lawyer to try to put a thumb on the scales during a nasty divorce – which is far from unprecedented, and in fact likely accounts for a huge percentage of domestic abuse allegationws.  Husbands and fathers are guilty until proven innocent, at least as far as the media and political class are concerned – as we saw with Fine. And it’s why the story is coming out today.  

I say nobody should even talk about leaving a race until Keith Ellison comes clean about his own, much better-documented history, not to mention Nicole MItchell leaving office and Judd Hoff leaves his legislative race. 

My two cents: This story means one or both of two things:

• The race for the state legislature is closer than the DFL is letting on. .
• Some oppo researcher, somewhere, is about to drop a big domestic abuse allegation against a DFLer. 

Any action on that bet?

During Covid, I spent a lot of time driving between Minnesota and North Dakota.

And I listened to both governors’ press conferences, back when those were a daily or weekly thing – in one case, back to back, Walz and Burgum.  And the contrast could not have been more stark: listening to Walz felt like I was back in elementary school, with a history teacher who was really more of a football coach talking, slowly, like he thought you were as dumb as one of the jocks on his offensive line.  Burgum, on the other hand, sounded like he knew he was addressing not just adults, but people he had to treat with some basic adult respect.

And after seeing this…

…it’s all starting to make sense to me.

Side note:  a joint press conference with Kamala Harris and Gwen Walz would drive the suicide rate into double digits.

I mean, it’s only Grenell. 

But, if true…:

…I mean, it’s not like I need more reasons not to vote for Kamala Harris. Picking one of the only attorneys-general worse than Eric Holder would be one.

But since the idea of appointing Ellison to AG is so egregiously stupid, one needs to ask – why?

• Is a potential Harris/Walz regime not being perceived as anti-Semitic enough?
• Did Harris’s polling slip in MN after picking Klink spook her that much?

Thoughts?

SCENE:   Governor Walz’s command post van, parked out back of the Minnesota State Fair.  Governor WALZ enters, dressed in his “regular Joe” costume, trailed by Lieutenant Governor FLANAGAN, sans turquoise earrings.  Trailing after in the entourage are the Governor’s press secretary, Moonbeam BIRKENSTOCK, and Lt. Gov. Flanagan’s press aide Cat SCAT.   WALZ’s face is red, causing his eyebrows to stand out like little white flares on a dark night.  Several other staffers, as well as FLANAGAN’s husband, former MPR political reporter and NPR’s MyLyssa SILBERMAN, reporter for National Public Radio’s Saint Paul bureau, covering the “Fake News” and “Diversity” beats, and Betty Rae TORSTENGAARDSEN, a writer at the (possibly fictional) progressive blog “MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com“, and Lac Qui Parle County Dairy Princess in 1987, and voted “most likely to end up as a freelance political writer” by her sorority at U of M Morris in 1992.

WALZ:  What the hell was that?

FLANAGAN:  Weren’t they tooooold of the policy?

BIRKENSTOCK:  It was on the handout (SCAT produces the handout); “The state fair is only about food and baby animals“. 

WALZ:   Then what the hell was this?

BIRKENSTOCK: It was all that out of town media.

WALZ:  Well, what can we do about them? 

SILBERMAN:  What do you mean, “do”?

WALZ:  Can we get rid of them until they know the rules?  I mean, just look at this:

WALZ: I mean, what happened to the reporters who knows the rules? Peggy, what did you do with that guy from Public Minnesota Radio?

FLANAGAN:  Dated and married him? (WEBER gushes).

WALZ:  Can one of you date and marry that woman?

(BIRKENSTOCK and SCAT trade nervous glances)

BIRKENSTOCK:  Uhhhhh…

WALZ:  Look – the Minnesota media knows their place.  What’s it gonna take to get these national people to follow the rules?

SILBERMAN:  I probably shouldn’t be talking here, but playing games with access usually does the trick.

BIRKENSTOCK:  I know, we gotta get in control of that.

TORSTENGAARDSEN:  Or – and this may seem a little radical – you could answer policy questions from the press…

(Everyone in the room looks at TORSTENGAARDSEN as if she’s farted in church)

WALZ:  Get her the hell out of here.

(Security guards and Secret Service pass TORSTENGAARDSEN out of the van like it’s a mosh pit in 1992). 

WALZ:  OK.  Serious discussion here.  National media.  What the hell?  Think, people…

And SCENE

Kamala Harris’s choice of Tim Walz for her running mate appears to be hurting her…

…in Minnesota:

Only 52% of Minnesota voters see him as an excellent or good choice, with 12% saying he’s a fair selection, and a staggering 34% saying he’s a poor pick.

Walz is underwater with men, with 49% approving of his selection and 50% opposing it. About 40% of male respondents called him a poor choice of running mate.

Voters under the age of 35, a key demographic Harris needs in November, also aren’t enthusiastic: 49% called Walz an excellent or good pick; the other 51% regarded him unfavorably. These voters make up 25% of the anticipated November electorate.

Walz is also one percentage point underwater with parents, with 48% regarding him favorably and 49% panning the pick. Among people with children, 35% say he was a poor selection.

And who knows him better than the people he’s been governing, badly and opaquely, for six years?

As one local wag put it…:

What she said.

Leave him at the door, America.

This past week, Brazil’s “supreme court” ordered a shutdown of “X” (formerly Twitter) after Elon Musk declined to participate in a sham court proceeding. 

The justice said the platform will stay suspended until it complies with his orders, and also set a daily fine of 50,000 reais ($8,900) for people or companies using VPNs to access it.

OK – so you say “banana repubics gonna banana republic”.   They got themselves a socialist PM, so it’s to be expected.

Yes, indeed; banana republics gonna banana republic:

In a just world, this would be a disqualifier for further service as an “Attorney General”, as actual lawyer and state rep Harry Niska points out:

Now, Niska’s not new at this – he knows most Twin Cities media only supports their free speech. But rules are rules.

Speaking of which – Ellison is certainly trashing the spirit of Minnesota law, if not the actual letter::

Tack this onto Governor Klink’s clear ambivalence about free speech, and the Twin Cities news media’s trite juvenility about doing its putative duty to democracy…:

…and it’s hard to know which is the bigger banana republic, Brazil or Minnesota.

Kamala Harris’s campaign has been hiding her and Governor Walz from unscripted public view for over a month.  They’re content to led the media do their mythmaking for them, and so are able to slop the trough with an endless stream of chanting points.  

Look familiar?

If you live in Minnesota, it sure should.

My theory – Democrats in Minnesota have figured out that you don’t really need candidates; you need figureheads; moderate-ish looking people who serve as social media conduits for chanting points.  Mark Dayton was one – he barely poked his nose out of his office fior eight years.  He was irrelevant; Ken Martin and Tina Smith did all the thinking. 

Walz is a little more active – in a social media sense.   He’s no less opaque than Dayton was, but is a more bald-faced conduit for the state’s non-profit/industrial complex.   He’s nothing but a stream of Tweets about the State Fair and “full bellies”.  

And it worked. 

And Democrats are trying the same thing nationwide; take an empty skirt, wrap it in platitudes and social media imagery, and blow enough “joy” up peoples pant legs to move enough numbers into the “D” column.  

Forget “forever chemicals” – this  system may be Minnesota’s most toxic export.  

Governor Walz hasn’t done a single substantive interview with a “Journalist” that isn’t throwing him sloppy kisses (Esme Murphy, Jason DeRusha) since before the ’22 election.

But this?

And our erstwhile “fourth estate”, the ones who are supposed to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable?

They’re yukking it up:

Not sure “peak Minnesota” means what Ms. Lopez thinks it means. 

The Minnesota DFL Regime. 

They don’t talk with the press, unless they’ve been vetted as utterly innocuous (Esme Murphy, Jason DeRusha) or affirmatively friendly (Rochelle Olson).

No, the sum total of the regime’s “transparency” is this time of the summer, when you get video of them wandering about the State Fair in their “Just Plain Folks!” costumes, eating junk food on camera. 

I mean, I suppose it’s easier than answering actual questions…

I have a hard time describing the contempt this bit here makes me feel:

She left the windows open (presumably at the Governor’s mansion, safely dug in down on “old money” Summit Avenue, miles from the actual rioting) and “smelled the tires burning”, because it was a “touchstone to what was happening”. 

I smelled it a little closer up. 

It was less a “touchstone” than it was my neighborhood – the one I’ve invested a few decades in – getting looted and burned by DFL voters. 

Like all communists, Gwen Walz sees everything in theoretical terms.  She’s one of the ones who is literally in the dacha, now.  She can afford to. 

The rest of us?  Not so much.

Tim Walz loves him some Chinese Communism. 

Well, at the very least he loved it, back when he was teaching kids “social studies”:

There appears to be precious little evidence that he changed anything but  his surface decorations (during 12 years as a “moderate” while campaigning in the rural 1st CD). 

When Governor Klink and the DFL legislative majority were making the case to squander the “surplus” [1], they put “cutting poverty by 30%” as one of their goals. 

So – how is poverty in Minnesota doing?

Well – we don’t know. 

Official poverty stats conveniently trail real time by a couple of years. 

Official poverty rates trail real time by a couple of years. In 2022, the official poverty rate in MN was 9.6% – up from 9.3% in 2021, and an even 9% in 2020.

So at some point – 2023? 2024? 2025? – the poverty rate needs to drop to 6.4% – a rate the state hasn’t seen in recent memory.

I’m going to go out on a short, sturdy limb and guess the rate isn’t dropping to a historic low next year.  

Any action on that bet?

[1] Which, let’s not forget, wasn’t really a surplus

…that amazes me about this “interview” with the loathsome Senator Smith…:

…is that Acosta actually called her on her lie. 

My expectations of the media have fallen that low.

On the other hand, Esme Murphy wouldn’t have done even that.

The Minnesota Military and Veterans Museum is a non-partisan, private museum located inside Camp Ripley, up near Baxter.

It published a book referencing MInnesotans’ involvement in twenty years of the Global War on Terror. 

It includes Governor Walz’s comments at a 9/11 address the the Capitol.

I’ve screenshot this quote from those remarks:

Let’s forget for a moment that Bagram is in Afghanistan; people flub things when speaking in public. Let’s just let that slide for the moment.

He said “he was in the Guard – and one night, he stood on a ramp at Bagram”.  

Was this yet another cutesy turn of phrase – “I said I was in the Guard, and that I was at a Ramp Ceremony; I didn’t literally say my Guard service and this ceremony intersected, you weird Repubulican”.

But it sure does look like he’s saying he was in the Guard in…er, someplace in action, doesn’t it.

Ilhan Omar won er primary against Don Samuels last night.

And boy, was she a class act afterwards:

So, if you’re a Don Samuels supporters in MInneapolis – a moderate, or just someone who’s sick of crime – I’ll invite you to take a look at Dalia Al Aqidi. 

She’s smart,  She’s sane.  She’s never called anyone’s voters “nazis” unless she was describing German voters in 1932. 

What do you have to lose?

UPDATE:  When you look at the world through the lens of Berg’s Seventh Law, it starts to make sense:

Maybe she was just deflecting away from the DFL’s support of actual Nazis in advance…

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is boxed in in at a stoplight.  Avery LIBRELLE rides up in between cars on a recumbent e-bike.  BERG ponders getting away over the sidewalk, but figures it’s not quite worth it.

BERG: (dejectedly, resigned to the inevitable). Hey, Aver…

LIBRELLE:  Shut up, Merg. Republicans like you are slandering a good man who served honorably for 24 years in the Minnesota National Guard. 

BERG:  So you dispute…

LIBRELLE:  Shut up!  There is no overriding or exception to the honor that must be bestowed on people who serve .

BERG:  Unless it’s George W Bush.

LIBRELLE:  He was a silver-spooned coward!

BERG:  Right.   (Checks traffic.  No joy).  So, to recap, Governor Walz served…

LIBRELLE:  …with impeccable honor.  For 24 years. 

BERG:  Right. Now – you do realize it’s not me saying this. 

LIBRELLE:  It’s a bunch of political hacks!

BERG:  It’s his battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Kolb:

And it’s his battalion’s chaplain, Captain Bjertness:

The chaplain of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s field artillery regiment said there is no excuse for the Democratic VP pick to have abandoned his National Guard unit before a critical deployment — not even running for Congress.

“In our world, to drop out after a WARNORD [warning order] is issued is cowardly, especially for a senior enlisted guy,” retired Capt. Corey Bjertness, now a pastor in Horace, North Dakota, told The Post.

Bjertness, 61, was the chaplain for the 1st Battalion, 125th Field Artillery, of which Walz was command sergeant major before retiring in 2005, two months before the unit deployed to Iraq. Walz has said he did so to run for Congress, and he was elected the next year.

And it’s the guy who replaced him as the Command Sergeant Major at the virtual last minute before they went overseas.

“He had the opportunity to serve his country, and said ‘Screw you’ to the United States. That’s not who I would pick to run for vice president,” Thomas Behrends, one of the retired officials who signed the letter, told the New York Post on Tuesday.

They have between them, if I’m doing my math correctly, a bare minimum of 55 years of honorable service among them.

Does that not make their point of view not merely dispositive, but above reproach? 

By your logic?

LIBRELLE:  (Looks around, quietly rides away).  

BERG:  Recumbents look stupid…

And SCENE

I didn’t know this until this morning-  but Governor Klink still has a House of Representatives twitter account.  

It’s in effect a zombie account, but it’s out there.  

And as of this 0445 this morning, it’s still “mis-speaking” for the Governor: 

It’s all right there – for the time being, at least.  

If he “misspoke”, he’s been doing it for a very long time.  

Judd Hoff is the DFL endorsed candidate running against Mary Franson in HD12B, the Alexandria area. 

He’s also a convicted felon, having threatened someone with a machete and served prison time. 

He’s also made a public display of stalking Rep. Franson, even moving in across the street from her to carry out his mania…

…against his opponent. 

And now:

Alexandria cops reportedly found hundreds of lawn signs – one supposes Franson signs – in his garage. 

Remember – they are the party calling Republicans “weird”.

Wonder if Mike McFeely will be contributing to Hoff’s defense fund?

Now that Tim Walz is enjoying the first of his fifteen minutes, it’s high time we revisit some of his greatest hits.

Here’s Gwen Walz – who seems more and more like a Jill Biden character lately, and that’s not a good thig – talking about her, uh, odd perspective on the 2020 riots:

As someone who didn’t need to leave any windows open to smell the smoke – it came from three blocks away – I want to make sure this clip sees a nice, wide audience.